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Hi all, We are getting closer to having our UFH pipes laid on the ground floor (in 50 mm liquid screed). My design is as shown in the attached image (150mm centres) , however have been told that its not the best way of having it and a spiral design would be better and give more even heating and less chance of any cracks. Is that right or is my design perfectly adequate? All the runs are less than 80m long, I didn't want to go more than 150mm on the centres as I wanted to improve heat up times on the system and the plan was to run the UFH at as low temperature as possible so that the boiler is condensation mode all the time while the heating is on (If anyone has any further information on system design in that respect it would be much appreciated). Thanks

Does anybody have any experience of ASHP from Cool Energy? I became aware of them last week when I visited the Sunamp factory and after looking at the Cool Energy site they seem to be considerably cheaper than a lot of their competitors. I was told at the time that they were not accredited by a scheme that allows you to claim RHI but as it is likely to be included in a smallish house I don't think the RHI payments would amount to much. I know very little about ASHPs so do they vary in performance and efficiency and if so do the Cool Energy units compare favourably and are they reliable? Any advice or recommendations welcome.

Hi, We probably have the highest electricity use of anyone on Buildhub. I am coming in at around 17000kWh per year, maybe 25% of this is for our Tesla. We generate around 3500kWh from out solar panels, he 17000 is a net number. We have a pool and the pump and dehumidifier use a to of electricity, but I wanted o get an idea if there were other things in the house using an unexpected amount. I bought a WiFi plus that monitors energy usage. They may not be that accurate, but I wanted to get an idea. I will put this into a spreadsheet once I have more data. I was pleasantly surprised to find the usage from our MVHR was very low. We have 3x Dantherm HCV/HCH5. Yesterday, I tested one of these and on the lowest speed setting, which I have them set on 90% of the time, it was only using 14W. My suspicion was that watching TV on our projection screen, which is pretty much standard practice was using a lot of electricity, so I wanted to check. The sound system uses around 100W, which is less than I expected, the projector uses 280W or 350W in HDR mode. The shocking thing is that if the screen is blank and it has gone to sleep it still uses 280W so that you don't need to wait for the bulb to warm up. I reckon that especially during lockdown it is on around 10 hours a day and often people just leave it switched on when they leave the room or don't realise it is on as the screen has gone to sleep. So watching TV is using 380W, which means it is using around 4kWh per day, or 1500kWh a year. So almost £200 a year. The one that surprised me was the Sky Q box which uses 27W whether or not it is on standby, so double what the MVHR uses. It goes into eco mode for 3 hours a night which won't really make much of a dent. So just over 200kWh a year. We have 2 network switches, 9 WiFi access points, a DSL router, a smart light controller and 4x CCTV cameras with a PVR. All these use 114W, so that is 1000kWh per year. I am trying to think which of these devices could be put on a smart plug and turned off at night. The trouble is that someone is bound to want to use something at an odd hour and complain. I need to check various Alexas, Sonos speakers, Sky Q minis etc which are all on 24 hours per day. Having looked up the specs the Alexas only use a few watts, I am suspicious of the Sky boxes but they don't have a hard drive in them like the main box so hopefully will be a lot lower. One thing I have done is programmed all the main lights in the house to switch off at 8.10 am during the school run and 10pm after bed time so that if anyone leaves lights on they don't stay on too long.

Hi all, We are early in our self build journey having just been granted planning in principle for our plot. We have an architect and have had first discussions with a broker, so the money side of things looks ok too. Cost and efficiency are big motivators as we currently live in an old house which haemorrhages both heat and money, Will also be our home for the next 30 odd years so running costs important. Have only now just started the bulk of our research as it took three years to sort the plot and didn't want to get ahead of ourselves. Will probably have questions on absolutely everything.Thanks!

We're getting pretty close to applying for planning permission and so I'm thinking more about our energy supply in the new build. If the submitted design gets through more or less intact, we will have pitched roof areas that face to all 4 points of the compass and the scope for fitting PV to all/any of the roof surfaces. I've come across a few comments that say although all south facing will give the maximum amount of energy, it gives a day time peak whereas having east/west orientation will give a lower but more useable amount of energy throughout the day. As our roof will be shaded only by itself, does it make sense to distribute the panels between east, south and west oriented roof areas? Is there anything likely to make this more difficult than just south facing?